Richard Morgan’s new novel is set a couple of hundred years into the future. Earth is divided into new power blocs, the United States is united no more and the world is as riven with factional discord as it is today.

At least there are no more wars. A breed of genetically enhanced supersoldiers – thirteens – has seen to that. But what do you do with supersoldiers where they’re no longer needed? You send them to the burgeoning human colony on Mars, out of harm’s way.

As the book opens, we learn that two such thirteens are no longer whiling away their days peacefully on the Red Planet. One of them, Carl Marsalis, has been seconded to Earth’s police. The other has escaped from Mars and made his way to the mother planet by stowing away on a freighter. He has killed the crew and arrived on Earth to start a bloody vendetta that soon has Earth’s authorities scratching their heads, baffled for a motive. They ask Marsalis for his help and he, together with ex-New York cop Sevgi Ertekin, begins a long, complex and very grisly manhunt.

Written deep into author Richard Morgan’s futurist landscape are many of the key ingredients of contemporary noir detective fiction – corruption, alienation and hard-boiled cynicism among them. The novel’s science fiction element relies largely on its strong depiction of future humanity’s widespread tinkering with genetics, and in the fearsome weapons the thirteens employ in dispatching their short-lived opponents. For all its pockets of high-tech prosperity, this is a dark, unfriendly world that becomes steadily bleaker as the two seekers after truth uncover the inevitable conspiracy that gives the story widening implications. Issues are addressed: racism, sexism and xenophobia all rear their ugly heads and help flavour the pages of this bulky work. The author manages his material well and the pace accelerates evenly. But the journey is a long one, and an appetite for violence seems an essential requirement from the reader. If that’s your bag, Black Man won’t disappoint.